Who was the greatest fighter out of the fabulous 4?

14-pages of posters (myself included) at cross purposes and conflating greatness, p4p H2H & literal H2H in discussions with one another. He's my attempt at bringing all that together in a single, simple post, that the majority, though not all, will likely agree with. By "greatness", I mean relative record & achievements at that weight, I don't, for example, consider Duran a great MW:

LW (H2H & greatness):

1. Duran

WW (H2H & greatness):

1. SRL
2. Hearns
3. Duran

LMW (H2H & greatness):

1. Hearns
2. SRL
3. Duran

MW (H2H across the field, i.e. SRL got the nod vs Hagler, but no way he does as well vs Hearns as Marvin did)

1. Hagler
2. SRL/Hearns
4. Duran

MW (greatness)

1. Hagler
2. SRL
3. Hearns/Duran (Hearns has the greater depth with wins over DeWitt, Shuler, Roldan & Sutherland, but Duran did much better vs both Barkley & Hagler).

P4P (H2H & greatness)

1. Duran
2. SRL
3. Hagler/Hearns

The above are both my own personal views & the most common views from various rankings I've seen where views of multiple people are factored in, including here - https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/top-35-all-time-reveal-boxing-survey-series.653021/

 

True...but as mentioned earlier, if it's on H2H, why bother having a thread in the first place? Ray himself was very complimentary to Marvin in an interview in the 80s, saying how much he admired Marv's ability to be an active champion and get up for defending his crown against whoever was deemed in line for the next shot (i.e. yet another #1 contender) and said he didn't think he could do that and was more about different 'challenges' rather than 'challengers' (or words to that effect). So that's why Duran is my pick, he is the only one other than Hagler to spend most of a decade being a dominant champion (as well as achieving success in other weight divisions).

 

Ray also wouldn't have taken up Hagler had Duran not shown that Marvin was also a Mortal. If Leonard had pulled something like Duran's Montreal performance in that match (keeping in account both their states at the time), I would rate him higher than Duran (even though, to the chagrin of some, Leonard is much closer in dimensions to Hagler than Duran was to him at WW).

 

Does it have to be a binary choice? One can look at the totality of each man’s careers and still believe the H2H records are important enough to tip the balance.

Duran probably would rank the highest in terms of greatness due to his incredible longevity and successes in multiple divisions, but I think SRL was the better fighter of the two.

An enjoyable thread in any case. ESB is still the definitive forum for Boxing related discussion.

 

Good post Addie.

Out of interest, who do you think was the best fighter, p4p, out of Monzon, Griffiths & Napoles?

Monzon ranks highest of the 3 for me, but barely, there's basically nothing to choose between the 3 imo, relative to their respective sizes. I consider them roughly equally as good as each other, p4p.

At MW, Monzon was clearly substantially better than the other 2, but of course as an ATG MW, he's 2 weight divisions above fighters who were both ATG WW's. Monzon vs Griffiths & Monzon vs Napoles went broadly how I'd expect fights to go between ATG fighters, where one was 2 x weight divisions bigger than the other.

 

I wish I could contribute mate, but I'm embarassed to admit that my knowledge on the likes of Monzon, Griffiths and Napoles is somewhat lacking. I have no idea how some of you guys seem to have intimate knowledge on every weight class in every era. It's impressive.

 

No need to be embarrassed pal, it's me that should be embarrassed for being such a boxing anorak, saddo